Thursday, March 29, 2007

Richard Hawke's "Cold Day in Hell"

He applied the "Page 99 Test" to Cold Day in Hell and reported the following:

So if the question here is, would folks reading only page 99 of my new book Cold Day in Hell be intrigued enough to read the book...? the answer is hell yes! Of course, if I were to choose the most representative page would it be page 99? Probably not, but I am so obsessive when it comes to my writing that I would spend 99 days trying to decide what represents the most representative page. Page 1? The last page? Such a torture! For the record, the scene that shows up on page 99 of CDIH takes place in a lawyer's office. Of the seven books I have published, this is my first lawyer's office scene. So how representative is this of anything? My private eye, Fritz Malone, did some background work on a jury for a big celebrity murder case (no, the celebrity wasn't murdered, he was accused of the murders) and in this particular scene he is getting gently chewed-out for not having dug up some particular info on a juror and her wacko husband that would not only have definitely kept the woman off the jury ... but might have reined in the out-of-control husband (imagine one of those out-of-control fathers who make their son's little league experience a living hell). In this particular case, the husband is emerging as a possible copy cat killer. Interesting? I think so. You won't find this the most colorful or active scene in the book, but insofar as getting a sense of my narrator's voice and how it is that he handles the people around him, it does the deed. If you want to know more about all this ... I think you know what you have to do.